by Ava Jae
Naï, she can’t. Because she doesn’t know, because she can’t know. I swallow hard. “Why are you awake? It’s late—or, early, I suppose.”
“I was thirsty.” Lira smiles weakly and shrugs.
Does her bedroom not have a washroom? I can’t remember what room she was assigned to. Is it even in this hall? I thought the rooms here were all larger—generally what guests and high-ranking officials get, but—
“You’re not just taking a walk because you’re upset, are you?” Lira asks.
I shouldn’t answer that question. I despise lying, but if there was ever a time to lie, it’s now. I shouldn’t trust Lira with the truth—she’s a redblood, and formerly a servant, and there isn’t a chance she’d agree that Dima shouldn’t face his sentence. Why would she? Dima never mistreated the servants, but he’s Sepharon and …
And I’m making a lot of unfounded assumptions about Lira just because she’s a redblood.
“I take your hesitation to mean naï,” she says with a soft laugh. “Do you need help?”
I frown. “Help?”
“Well, sha.” She steps toward me and lowers her voice to barely above a whisper. “You’re freeing Dima, aren’t you?” My eyes widen and she smiles. “I’m not going to tell anyone, don’t worry. But I understand. I’d do the same for my brother, even if he was a sko who probably deserved it.”
I should deny it. Lie. Claim I don’t know what she’s talking about. Tell her what she’s talking about is a crime. Make it impossibly clear I would never consider such a thing—even if it’s exactly what I just allowed.
But I’m exhausted. Keeping everything in, refusing to trust, it’s draining. I want someone I can confide in, someone I can turn to. I may have lost Anja, and it’s clear Eros and I will never have that kind of closeness again, but why not Lira? She’s offering to help.
“You have a brother?”
Lira nods. “So do you need help?”
“I—naï.” I run my hand through my hair and inhale deeply, stilling my breaths and forcing back the tears.
“Are you sure? I don’t want to miss out on something exciting—insomnia is a boring bitch.”
I glance at her. “I’m not sure I would call this exciting.”
“Well you may not, but I sure as sand would.”
Something twists inside me—the way she speaks, the phrases she uses and the lilt of her Sephari—it reminds me of Eros. “You didn’t grow up in Vejla, did you?”
Lira blinks, then tilts her head and smiles slightly. “How could you tell?”
“The way you speak. It—reminds me of someone.”
“Eros, right? I guess that makes sense.”
“Did you know him?”
“Nah, I wasn’t a nomad like him. But everyone knows your relationship with Eros, so wasn’t a big leap to guess.”
I frown. If she wasn’t a nomad and she didn’t grow up in Vejla, then—
“Well, good night, Kora.” She pushes off the wall and smiles, nodding at me through the darkness. “And best of luck. To all of you.”
I nod as Lira makes her way past me down the hall. We need all the fortune we can get tonight—especially Jarek and Dima.
I don’t know if they’ll make it out of the city. I don’t know if they’ll make it out of the territory. I don’t know if they’ll last a few segments or a few sets or a few terms or cycles.
But it’s out of my hands now. I did what I could.
And I don’t doubt I’ll have to pay for it.
24
Eros
We looked all fucken set and we couldn’t find him. Not in his room, not in his usual hangouts like the garden or the library audio archives or the dining hall. Not wandering the halls, or wandering the complex—which he technically wasn’t supposed to be doing anyway but I wouldn’t have cared if it meant we found him and he was okay.
He’s missing.
My nephew is missing.
Missing in a city where people hate him, a city where people are literally losing their minds with illness, where a contagious disease is spreading—albeit slowly now—but still. We checked the whole fucken complex—even Mija’s been looking for him and that’s not even her fucken job—and now I’m standing at the edge of the mostly abandoned palace complex merchant square, Mal is still missing, and if anything happened to him—
“You’re about to panic again.” Deimos rubs my back, his eyes narrow in the harsh warm light of the setting suns. “Don’t panic. Breathe. Just breathe.”
“Easy for you to say.” I press the heels of my hands into my closed eyes, taking a slow, shivering breath of hot desert air. I lower my hands and run my thumb over Aren’s bracelet, which is wearing out a bit from all the times I’ve rubbed it. “It’s not your nephew who’s missing.”
Deimos’s hand stops moving on my back, just for a mo. “I’m … going to choose not to let that comment bother me, because I know you’re upset. But I hope you realize I care a great deal for Mal, too.”
“ … Sorry. You’re right, I’m just—I’m trying to imagine a situation where he’d be missing for this long but still be totally fine and it’s not working.”
“I know.” Deimos sighs and slips his arm over my shoulders. “It’s completely reasonable for you to be worried, but I swear to you we’ll find him. And I’m choosing to believe he’s fine and just … lost track of time, doing whatever he’s doing.”
I wish I could do that. Just choose to believe something and believe it so easily. I wish I could tell my brain to think a certain way, to be a certain way, and it’d just happen. Instead, my insides are trying to crawl out of my throat and every breath shudders in my lungs and it’s too hot to focus and my skull is pounding endlessly with the second-worst brainblaze of my life and I just want to curl up in a ball and sleep but I can’t, not while worrying about Mal, and not even if he were fine.
“Sure,” I say, but my voice sounds hollow, even to me.
“We should get inside.” Kosim nods back toward the palace behind us. “I don’t like being out here. We’re too exposed.”
Deimos frowns. “We haven’t left the complex. Surely we don’t have to worry about a threat in here … do we?”
“There are always threats,” Kosim answers flatly.
Fejn nods. “It would be best to go back inside. And I’m sure the border guards wouldn’t have allowed Mal to leave the complex alone, so it’s only a matter of time before we find him.”
It hurts to agree, but there’s no point in looking out here anymore. Not when we’ve looked as thoroughly as we have and come up empty.
At least Varo and Kantos and the rest of them are still looking for him, too.
Doesn’t stop me from glancing around on the off-chance I might see him as we wind around the mostly empty streets, where closed stall and store after stall and store stare glumly back at us. I run my fingers over the mark of Sirae snaking over my hand—it doesn’t itch anymore, but the dark pathways over my skin of tight, clean writing I can’t read still feels kinduv like someone else’s mark—and turn Aren’s bracelet over my wrist again and again as our feet trudge over the sand-strewn stone.
And then a flash of rust-orange stops me so dead Fejn stumbles into me. “What is it?” He peers down the empty alley I’m frowning into, cupping his hand like a visor over his eyes.
Sweat drips down my back and I try to keep my breathing even—don’t get excited, don’t hope, not yet. “Hold on.” I break from the group, feet pounding over gritty, sandy stone as someone curses behind me—Deimos, or Kosim, probably, I don’t care. I race down the alley and around the bend to a narrow space between buildings, barely wide enough for me to stretch out my arms.
A boy is standing there, arms-length away, back to me, orange head-wrap tied around his head. Breathing heavy, holding his middle, head lowered, like crying, or in pain. His skin is lighter than Mal’s, and lighter still pathways swirl down the back of his neck and over his back and arms. A Sepharon boy.
&nbs
p; Not Mal.
My stomach sinks. Something hot and tight crawls up my throat as footsteps settle behind me—the group catching up, I guess. I turn to them and shake my head, blood heavy as I mutter, “Sorry, I thought—”
A scream behind me jolts me into a turn as something heavy slams me to the ground. Pain rips through my shoulder—hot and deep—as the kid sits on my chest and digs his grimy fingers into my mouth and—
The pain tears through wet and burning as the kid is yanked off me. I slap my hand over the wound pouring blood over my chest and back and my skin is instantly slick with the stuff. Stars above it fucken hurts. Kosim grips him in a tight body hug as the kid writhes, kicking and screaming and bucking his head and it’s then that I see his eyes: shiny and black.
He’s diseased. He’s diseased and he just bit a chunk out of my shoulder and Kosim is wrestling with him and—
The kid twists around and spits pink and purple-red on Kosim’s face. Kosim throws the kid to the ground before the blast of a phaser burst turns the rabid kid into a—a corpse. He’s dead.
Fejn is shaking as he puts away his phaser. He looks at Kosim and me. “You both need to see Zarana immediately.”
I’m still shaking after Zarana has finished patching up my shoulder and had me breathe in so many boosters my mouth has gone numb. I can still feel that kid’s teeth sinking into my shoulder—the ripping sensation as Kosim yanked him off—his dead eyes staring into the suns. He couldn’t have been much older than Mal, and his eyes were black and this fucken disease—
What if I get sick? Or Kosim? What if we already are?
“Kosim and I should be quarantined.” My voice is flat. Hollow.
“I agree,” Zarana says. “The symptoms usually appear within a couple segs, so we’ll quickly know if there’s anything we need to worry about.”
Kosim just leans silently against the wall and nods. He wasn’t hurt, but the kid spit my blood and his saliva all over his face. I’m probably more at risk of being sick seeing how the kid bit me and all, but we need to be safe, especially since they say the disease is passed on through body fluids. I won’t risk infecting everyone.
Kosim and I settle in small glass cube-like rooms, next to each other so it’s almost like we’re not alone. And I mean, we’re not alone—Deimos leans against the opposite side of the wall in the hallway and Zarana sets it so we can hear each other through it, so there’s that. The rooms are pretty empty: just a bed, sink, and offshoot to a not-glass washroom, but they also gave us each our personal glasses and set up larger glasses on the walls, which I’m decently sure they’re only doing because it’s us. I’m not complaining, though.
I’m honestly less concerned about getting sick than I probably should be, mostly because Mal is still missing. As far as I know, he could be sick, too. After all, if that sick kid was somehow in the complex, it means there are other sick people in the complex, too. Which means none of us are safe, not really.
Deimos does his best to distract me for stars-know-how-long, mostly through reading off People Speak reports. Ignoring “general unpleasantness” as Deimos put it, that they filtered out, it sounds like people’s main concerns are a cure for the plague and fully restoring the nanites. I got a couple nice messages from humans, though, saying they’re glad to see someone like me in power and they hope I won’t forget them.
I won’t forget them.
More of a problem, though, are reports filtering both through the network and other channels of some people ignoring the slavery abolishment law. Deimos agrees to send instructions to security across the globe to enforce the new law as strictly as possible and arrest those who try to defy it.
There are other messages, too, from formerly enslaved people skeptical the law will hold. Or worried they won’t be able to support themselves, even with the programs set in place meant to help them build their new lives. Which is obviously fair, and all we can really do is make sure the programs set in place to help them are running smoothly.
A lot of the messages are videos, which Deimos and I watch together. One, from a formerly enslaved woman, really stays with me.
“I want el Sira to know while we’re all glad he’s finally changed the law, it’s not going to be as simple as declaring slavery over and moving on to the next problem.” She twists a little and gestures to her arm, where a band of black text is inked into her skin. “This mark will never go away. Neither will our memories, and we won’t get the cycles of our lives back that were spent as property. This is a good step forward for human rights, and I’m so glad for it, but please don’t let this be the only step.”
I rub the almost identical marking on my arm, the one declaring me Kora’s personal bodyguard. Telling the world I was hers.
I may have not spent cycles as someone else’s property, but I know what it’s like to lose everything, even your own right to freedom. And she’s right. It doesn’t just go away with a few words. I’ll be working to give humans equal standing on Safara for as long as I’m Sira—and if I have anything to say about it, so will whoever comes after me, and whoever comes after that.
None of this will go away quickly. We all have to work to be better together.
Eventually I tell Deimos he should probably get some rest.
“You don’t have to stay all night,” I say. “I’ll be fine in here.”
“I know I don’t have to, but—”
“Deimos.” I smile weakly and press my palm against the wall. “Really, I’m going to feel bad if you end up sleeping in the hallway. I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”
Deimos hesitates, but before he can answer, the giant glass hanging on the wall and my personal glass lying on the bed lights up blue with a low beep before an image of an empty room appears with a sound like a mic getting shuffled around.
I frown. “Did you turn those on?”
“Naï,” Deimos says slowly. “I’m not even in the room, shae?”
Kosim jerks up in the room next to me and scowls at the giant glass in his room, displaying the same blue image. He clenches his fist and touches his ear with his free hand, probably talking through the coms to the other guards.
Then a woman steps into the frame and my stomach bottoms out as Deimos stiffens. Rani looks exactly the way I remember her: perpetually blazed and determined to do something about it—something that’ll probably leave someone dead.
“My name is Rani Jakande,” she says, and her voice echoes just slightly from the delay on the smaller glasses, making it sound like there’s three of her in the room. “I’m the leader of the Remnant, a widespread network of humans fighting for equal representation and freedom.”
I glance at Deimos. “How is she doing this? Is this broadcasting everywhere or just here?”
Deimos shakes his head. “I don’t know how. But judging by the way she’s introducing herself, I’d guess it’s more widespread than just here. If she were just trying to contact you, she wouldn’t need to introduce herself again.”
He has a point.
Fejn rushes down the hall, pale-faced and frowning.
“El Sira, we have a situation,” Kosim says through the wall.
“I can see that.” I gesture to the glasses.
“We’re in the middle of a revolution as we speak,” Rani continues. “We will stop at nothing to get our rights, and if ken Sira won’t cooperate and give us what we deserve by virtue of being living, rational beings, then we’ll take it ourselves.”
“Our techies are trying to shut it down,” Kosim says.
“It’s streaming planet-wide,” Fejn adds with a grimace.
Prickling heat drips down my spine. Rani warned us, but she didn’t exactly give us a lot of time to try to make things happen, either. And now she’s addressing the whole fucken planet with—with whatever this is.
“We, the Remnant, commend ken Sira for taking a step forward and abolishing slavery. It was far overdue, but we acknowledge the move is in the right direction. But it is not enough.
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“We, the Remnant, take full responsibility for the plague spreading across Asheron—and we can, and will, make things much worse if humans aren’t given fair representation in the government, and ken Sira doesn’t take steps toward reorganizing the current system to make it equitable and chosen by the people—all the people. The times of royal bloodlines must end or we will take matters into our own hands.
“Any deaths from here on out are on your head, Eros.”
And just like that the glasses turn off.
And we are so fucked.
25
Kora
I suppose if I was going to choose the perfect night to aid my brother and his boyfriend to escape the cells and run from the territory, the night to do it would be a night like tonight: when redblood rebels created global chaos by hacking the world feed to threaten Eros and the people. In a way, this perfect chaos almost feels like Kala’s blessing on the whole matter.
As a bonus, it distracted me from dissolving into an anxious mess imagining all the horrible ways it could go wrong.
Uljen puts on his prosthetic leg and throws on pants as he stumbles out of bed, his mussed hair slipping in front of his eyes as he grumbles under his breath about it being the middle of the night.
“Or’jiva to ruling,” I say dryly. “The world unfortunately doesn’t stop so the rest of us can sleep.”
Uljen stands up straight and brushes his hair out of his eyes with his hand. “How are we going to respond to this?”
“I’m not sure we have to,” I answer. “We’ve already done what the Remnant wanted—they even commended us.” I lift a shoulder. “I think this is on Eros. All we really have to do is see if we can safeguard our feeds so they can’t force their way on again, but the rest is up to ken Sira.”
Uljen nods. “Do you think he’ll do it? Abolish it globally?”
“I know he’s certainly wanted to. This gives him a good excuse to do it more quickly than he may have otherwise.”
“That’s true.” Uljen frowns. “So you think we … should do nothing?”